Originally Posted by
christian archer
But lets be honest, if flap retraction on short field landings is neccessary for maximum braking efficiency, you sure as hell aren't getting back out of that field again anyway since TO requires a lot more field in SEPs than landing.
Are you assuming the same conditions on landing as on take-off? That does not necessarily hold in many different practical scenarios, e.g., dropping payload, wet vs. dry runway, wind / air density changes, etc.
Regardless of it being in the syllabus, I will not teach my students to fiddle around with flap levers on the ground roll.
If it's in the syllabus, it's probably because someone who knows better than you has put it there for a good reason. I'm not sure you're not doing your students a disservice by not following the syllabus without due justification.
If its that short they shouldn't be going there.
If it's contemplated in the POH and they have the necessary skills why not? Of course, unless someone competent teaches them, how could they develop those skills safely? More generally, from the fact that there is a runway, one can assume that other pilots are using it successfully. If your students aren't, it surely follows that you are giving your pupils a lower quality of instruction.
Finally, and as has been mentioned before, another reason for retracting flaps is to avoid rocks punching holes through them, or simply to reduce drag sufficiently to be able to reach the top of very steep runways--both of which are common occurrences in my kind of flying.